tisdag, augusti 25, 2009

In Sweden the circulating edition of the German 1580 Liber Concordiae; the Books of Concord, is a private one, which was made in 1944 after the 1930 German "Urtext" after the Latin...

But in Sweden the Books of Concord have little standing; they are merely an explanation (1660) to the un-changed 1530 Confessio Augustana.

The 1580 Books of Concord are the Confessional writs of the Gnesio Lutherans of Germany, Dr Martin’s spiritual grandchild-ren. They were, however, only achieved through long draw out negotiations among the representatives of the most important Princes whose predecessors had once signed the CA during Charles V’s Coronation Parliament as German Emperor in Frank-furt in April 1530.

As you remember, there is also a Calvinism-leaning CA 1540; the CA Variata, and an Eastern-leaning one; the 1548 CA Variatis-sima.

In Sweden it has always been the 1530 Confessio Augustana which has been at the centre of discussions… meaning that in the 1563 Liquorist quarrel the opposition (Huguenot Senator Beur-reus, former teacher to the sons of King Gustaf I) claimed the 1530 CA, but quoted the Variata ;=) calling Lutheran Arch Bishop Laurentius Petri (the second longest serving to date) a Roman…

In fact the penultimate Provincial Synod, the famous 1593 Upsala Meeting changed the German languish version of the CA 1530 in its Confessio fídei of the 20th March 1593. It's only this Confessio fídei, published in 1594 and never reprinted (it’s the contents not the letter, even less the print, which is valid in the Church) which is the Confession of the Church of Sweden, despite what the 19th century Pietists say.

The 1st Article of the 1593 Confessio fídei retains the 3 Old Church formulas; the Apostolicum (largely a Roman Baptism Confession of the 2nd century, the filioque being Carolingian: the Council of Frankfurt 795), the Nicenum (first adopted not in Nicea 325 but in Constantinoples in 394), the Anastasianum (Spanish/Carolin-gian, only ever used in monasteries – its inclusion being the influ-ence of Melanchthon’s Academic Reform humanism), as well as the un-changed CA 1530.

The 2nd Article affirms God's Pure (“pure” meaning Gospel only, refuting Works) and Salvific Word as expressed by the Writs of the Holy Prophets, Evangelists and Apostles (this is a refutal of the Calvinist formula “the Prophets and the Apostles”, the OT minus the OT "Apocrypha" plus the NT plus the NT Apocrypha, the Gnosticist/Philosophical Alexandrian deutero-canonical (as best) writs, so dear to Calvinism ;=)

It also states that these comprise all that is necessary.

Further it affirms the church teaching in the Age of Old King Gus-taff I and the 1571 Church order of Arch Bishop Lars.

It also rejects remaining “unnecessary ceremonies”; candles, mo-ving the Missal from right to left, bells at elevation… saying that the Priest shall teach the people to drop these – but without anger and noise… (it’s doubtful if this actually happened before the 19th century).

The 3rd Article rejects the (2nd) Baptismal exorcism, come back in our days (this was Calvinist influence – the Kings from Charles IX were Calvinists until Adolph Frederic of Holstein-Gottorp, who had been the Lutheran Bishop of Lübeck).

The 4th Article rejects the 1576 Lithurgia (quasi Roman but non Tridentine) of King John III.

The 5th Article confirms the right of private assembly of immi-grated “foreign confessors” (Calvinists) for the sake of Trade and Commerce. However these were forbidden to have churches or profess their Religion openly. This came from a 1563 Open Letter of Eric XIV, in fact defending the adherents (including Berreus’ brother-in-law the Superintendant Ofeegh; un-Cowardly, of Väst-erås) of Zwinglian Supper, after the 1563 Parliament. The War with Denmark had made wine expensive - and the Zwinglian-leaning tried to take advantage of the situation...

The 6th Article promulgates the desicions and orders their publication (in 1594).

The Books of Concord, omitting Melanchthon’s Tractatus papae; his 1534 rebuttal of Gregory VII’s 1073 Dictatus Papae – obvious-ly, the Bishop of Rome wasn’t perceived as a Dictatus problem in Sweden - were only published in the 1730 Concordia Pia, contem-poraneous with the Senate’s eviction the Radical Pietists.

The sole exception seems to be the 1510s, when Albrecht of Bran-denburg, Arch Bishop of Magdeburg, paid for his 1514 elevation as Elector Arch Bishop of Mainz by the selling of indulgencies while the Pope simultaneously was pressed to support Charles V's policies in defence of his brother-in-law Christiern II against Sweden.

The indulgencies sold in Sweden ended up in Copenhagen paying for Christian’s War – which caused a rightful scandal, putting an end to the Union of Calmar and preparing the way for the Reformation...

The Books of Concord. like in Germany, were resurrected in the 19th century by the conservative Pietist in their fight against the established church in Prussia (think the 1830 Agenda).

måndag, augusti 24, 2009

Counterlight has written some very interesting entries about the influences on early Christian art on his Blog and today he has reached Emperor Constantine’s time and the emergent Church Catholic. Which makes me wonder if the use by Constantine and his successors of Christianity as a means of unifying the Empire was an afterthought…?

Likeways it seems that there were no Bibles in our sense yet, only lose books sometimes collected, but more often separate: the 4 Gospels in different order in West (Matthew, John, Mark, Luke) and East (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), the Corpus Paulinum (originally of 7 letters by length), in the end of 14, the Corpus Iohanneum (including the Apokalypis, which having 7 addressees is often thought of as an Epistle), the 7 Alexandrian Catholic Letters.

The Codex Vaticanus seems to have been among the first Pandects or whole Bibles, closely (after perhaps half a century) followed by the (somewhat different) Codex Sinaiticus.

The suspicion being, that they too were the product of a need/use for “unity” in State and Religion.

Remember that to Roman State theory (and all later State Ideo-logy…) these were one and the same. The nescessitas of Unity for stabilitas; the quiet of the State, was a never questioned dogma, up till the arrival of Democracy in the 20th century.

But the Idea that it was Constantine who established the Bible as a "Canon" is heard only in America – typical 20th century Ameri-can Integrism, I would say. Also, the concept of Canonical itself is in my mind very late and spurious.

1st Millennium Bibles were a hotch potch of this and that – to be excised piece after piece from the 12th century into the end pro-duct; the Bibles we know.

Take the big Codex Gigas at the Royal Library in Stockholm, for instance. Click on the Headline!

Gigas is not like a modern Bible. It was taken from Emperor Rudolph’s library in Prague in 1648, whence it had been taken from a convent in Bohemia which had gotten it from a German convent around 1200 (the Bohemian Chronicle of Kosmas having been added in the process).

Codex Gigas contains the OT in the Alexandrian pre Christian order, and with the Historical books after the lesser Prophets, ending with the Maccabees, to which is added Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities and an Old Latin NT, with the Catholic letters preced-ing Revelation and the Pauline Epistles last. Then follow some works we wouldn’t dream of putting in a Bible including the Encyclopaedia and letters (Laodicians) by Isidor of Seville, a Confession (unclear whether Saint Augustine's), his City of God, with illustration.

Then follows the famous illustration of the Devil, which popularly gives the book its name "The Devils Bible", followed by witchcraft formulas DE FURTIS & FEBRIBUS : on Thieves and Fevers, Kos-mas’ Bohemian Chronicle c:a 1045-1125, and the Necrologium or Names of Benefactors, to which is added a Calendar.

In reality the first canonical Bible in the Modern sense seems to have been the short (Calvinist, that is without the OT Apocrypha, but with the NT ones = the Alexandrian writs) 1555 Geneva Bible, closely followed by the Tridentine canonisation (erroneously in Hieronomys’s name) of the 12th century Parisian changes (the Versio vulgata parisiensis) in the Old Latin translation of the long LXX Bible (including the OT Apocrypha), as further changed by Erasmus and the boys in the 16th century (editing out the 5th century Byzantine additions in favour of the more familiar Parisian ones – so they clearly were aware of what they were doing ;=)

A 17th century edition of this 16th century Bible is what often is referred to as the Texus Receptus; the received Text.